The Secret of the Labyrinth
by Eu Tyto Alba
Summary: At the end of the movie, Jareth reflects on an important conversation that he had with his father when he was still just a young prince.


Note: For best effect, read immediately after watching the movie.

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><p><strong>"The Secret of the Labyrinth"<strong>

A rush of wings and cloth, and away the Goblin King flew. _How happy she was._He couldn't stand it! He'd be forever on the outside looking in. He couldn't understand it. He'd never had human friends. He couldn't communicate the way that they do. Jareth was as goblin as they come, through and through.

And yet not a goblin at all, but human by blood.

"How can this be?" he asked his father, long ago, when at last they spoke of the greater ebb and flow of life and power. "I have never been to the human world," young Jareth cried.

His father was harsh, but honest.

"I stole you away from your crib as your real parents slept when you were just a baby," the king said without so much as a twitch in his expression. His voice was easy, as though remarking on a cloud that had briefly passed over the sun. Jareth remembered sharply a sudden feeling of betrayal when his father's continued apathy and straightforward replies had finally convinced him that it wasn't a joke.

"_Humans_ cannot do magic as I can. I don't believe you," he refuted.

But his father coddled him.

"Don't be silly. It matters not where we come from. You know very well that the only rule which magic follows is that all things can change. And there is much magic in our world. All whom it infects belong to it-to _us_, my son! But there is a secret which I must share with you of grave importance. It is the history of our land, which not a single subject of ours knows."

"And what's that?" Jareth remarked, still feeling ill at ease.

"Come, sit with me." The Goblin king strolled over to a circular pit cut in the stone floor of the room. It had a high, wide step carved within it like a bench. On this there were spread many fine red and purple textiles and soft pillows which the king adjusted to make himself comfortable, and indicated to for Jareth to do likewise. The Goblin prince followed into the nest obediently, and his father embraced him with one arm.

"Believe it or not, I was just like you once. _Just _like you. My parents were simple people with simple lives, toiling away at their jobs in the tiny human kingdom of Connecticut. Yes, I was human myself once, too."

Jareth was listening, but only as a human child listens to a fairytale.

He let his eyes wander around the room. The floor was bare granite, and all the sparse furnishings looked to be about a thousand years old. Luxurious yet severely moth-eaten draperies framed the glassless tower windows, and snowy white cobwebs spanned beautifully over every ceiling corner. They glittered gold when the sun set and rose each day. And then late at night their eight-legged occupants would gather and weave together over miniature tea and biscuits.

"I would remember more than you do about my time as a human because I was older when I first came to Goblin City. When I was a small boy, I discovered a patch of fairy rings hidden behind some old trees that grew near where I lived. I had heard that if you wait beside a fairy ring all night, then when the fairies came back at dawn they would grant you a wish. Crazy right? Well, that's what humans really think! They-_we_-didn't know any better. So I waited. And the next thing I knew, I was waking up on the porch of Old McCoggin's! I went in, and as soon as I told the waitress I was lost she gave me a meal on-the-house. An exceptionally forgetful old hag, she never thought to tell me that if a human eats Goblin food, he can never go back to the human world. How was I supposed to know what is common knowledge in a foreign land? Afterward, I searched and searched for weeks, in vain, for any way out of the city, until I came to know the lay of its streets like the back of my own hand, and all of its citizens knew me personally by name. Eventually, rumors of my presence and quest reached the ears of its king.

'I am sorry,' he said to me, taking my hand in his, 'but there's only one thing I can do, and you're not going to like it. One way or the other, Goblin City is your new home.' I missed my parents dearly, and could not wait to see them again whatever the cost. A _human_ could not return, but a _goblin_ could under appropriate circumstances. He gave me his powers and his kingdom-as I have given them to you-and ever since then I have kept watch over my family sadly from the shadows like their special guardian angel."

"What's a 'guarding angel'?" Jareth asked, fidgeting with telekinesis on his bootlaces.

His father raised an eyebrow.

"Oh. It... It is a kind of giant fairy that no one can see or hear, but it follows you everywhere you go so it can keep you safe, even when you _think_ you're all alone."

"Oh. But if you can't see or hear it, then how do you know it's not slacking off somewhere else or making faces at you?"

His father smirked slightly.

"I guess you _don't_. But they are _usually _extremely benevolent. Now where was I?" the Goblin King said, biting one of his leather gloved knuckles in concentration.

A strong breeze rushed in through the four windows, tossing the dusty curtains and ruffling the prince's feathery, pail hair. It was mid autumn, which only meant to Jareth that Halloween was drawing near. Every whiff of the intensifying chill in the air filled him with excitement over the approaching festivities. Halloween was simply what goblins do best.

"Ah, yes... The Goblin King explained to me that never in all this land's history has there ever been a Goblin _Queen_. For one thing, he said, we are _goblins _after all; Not usually the sort to fall in love. But the simple fact is that the very first Goblin King was actually a human-a sorcerer-who created a land for himself in the realm of magic. At the time he hadn't realized what a precarious position he'd put himself in. You see, sorcerers must remain chaste or else they will loose their powers, and Daedalus eventually realized that if he ever lost his powers, or died without passing them on, then his kingdom and all who lived in it would disappear as if they never existed at all."

An oppressive silence followed as Jareth allowed this revelation to sink in. Were their lives, no, their very existences, really all balanced on a knife's edge? All the time but one fatal mistake away from evaporating like a mist-no, something less-like a _dream_?

Jareth's father seemed to be reading his mind-for that matter, he may well could have been.

"Magic can call things in and out of existence against all the conventional physical rules of the universe. That, my dear boy, is why humans find it so frightening. They can feel the void breathing down their necks whenever their science falls short-especially at describing the beginning and end of Time. Just between you and me, they have _no idea_what that is really like."

"No kidding," whispered the owl to himself, silhouetted against the full moon, as he recalled his late father's terrible words. His wings beat hard, keeping his muscles and feathers warm, and yet his soul shivered in the chill of this bitter reality.

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><p>AN: There's a lot more content I wanted to add to this story, but I've already worked on it too long and for now my interests have shifted. *shrug* I might extend it yet, but don't count on it.<p> 


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